Roadwork Read online

  “Was Jeff the guy you were living with?”

  “Yes. The worst trip was one time I decided to plunge out the sink. I don’t know why. You get funny ideas sometimes when you’re tripping, except they seem perfectly normal. It seemed like I had to plunge the sink. So I got the plunger and did it… and all this shit came out of the drain. I still don’t know how much of it was real shit and how much was head shit. Coffee grounds. An old piece of shell. Great big hunks of congealed grease. Red stuff that looked like blood. And then the hand. Some guy’s hand.”

  “A what?”

  “A hand. I called to Jeff and said, Hey, somebody put somebody down the drain. But he had taken off someplace and I was alone. I plunged like hell and finally got the forearm out. The hand was lying on the porcelain, all spotted with coffee grounds, and there was the forearm, going right down the drain. I went into the living room for a minute to see if Jeff had come back, and when I went into the kitchen again, the arm and the hand was gone. It sort of worried me. Sometimes I dream about it.”

  “That’s crazy,” he said, slowing down as they crossed a bridge that was under construction.

  “Chemicals make you crazy,” she said. “Sometimes that’s a good thing. Mostly it isn’t. Anyway, we were into this heavy drug thing. Have you ever seen one of those drawings of what an atom looks like, with the protons and neutrons and electrons going around?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it was like our apartment was the nucleus and all the people who drifted in and out were the protons and electrons. People coming and going, drifting in and out, all disconnected, like in Manhattan Transfer.”

  “I haven’t read that one.”

  “You ought to. Jeff always said Dos Passos was the original gonzo journalist. Freaky book. Anyway, some nights we’d be sitting around watching TV with the sound shut off and a record on the stereo, everyone stoned, people balling in the bedroom, maybe, and you wouldn’t even know who the fuck everyone was. You know what I mean?”

  Thinking of some of the parties he had wandered drunkenly through, as bemused as Alice in Wonderland, he said that he did.

  “So one night there was a Bob Hope special on. And everybody was sitting around all smoked up, laughing like hell at all those old one-liners, all those same stock expressions, all that good-natured kidding of the power-crazies in Washington. Just sitting around the tube like all the mommies and daddies back home and I thought well, that’s what we went through Viet Nam for, so Bob Hope could close the generation gap. It’s just a question of how you’re getting high.”

  “But you were too pure for all that.”

  “Pure? No, that wasn’t it. But I started to think of the last fifteen years or so like some kind of grotesque Monopoly game. Francis Gary Powers gets shot down in his U-2. Lose one turn. Niggers dispersed by fire hoses in Selma. Go directly to jail. Freedom riders shotgunned in Mississippi, marches, rallies, Lester Maddox with his ax handle, Kennedy getting blown up in Dallas, Viet Nam, more marches, Kent State, student strikes, women’s liberation, and all for what? So a bunch of heads can sit around stoned in a crummy apartment watching Bob Hope? Fuck that. So I decided to split.”

  “What about Jeff?”

  She shrugged. “He has a scholarship. He’s doing good. He says he’s going to come out next summer, but I won’t look for him until I see him.” There was a peculiar disillusioned expression on her face that probably felt like hardy forebearance on the inside.

  “Do you miss him?”

  “Every night.”

  “Why Vegas? Do you know someone out there?”

  “No.”

  “It seems like a funny place for an idealist.”

  “Is that what you think I am?” She laughed and lit a cigarette. “Maybe. But I don’t think an ideal needs any particular setting. I want to see that city. It’s so different from the rest of the country that it must be good. But I’m not going to gamble. I’m just going to get a job.”

  “Then what?”

  She blew out smoke and shrugged. They were passing a sign that said:

  LANDY 5 MILES

  “Try to get something together,” she said. “I’m not going to put any dope in my head for a long time and I’m going to quit these.” She gestured her cigarette in the air, and it made an accidental circle, as if it knew a different truth. “I’m going to stop pretending my life hasn’t started yet. It has. It’s twenty percent over. I’ve drunk the cream.”

  “Look. There’s the turnpike entrance.”

  He pulled over to the side.

  “What about you, man? What are you going to do?”

  Carefully, he said: “See what develops. Keep my options open.”

  She said: “You’re not in such hot shape, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “No, I don’t mind.”

  “Here. Take this.” She was holding out a small aluminum packet between the first and second fingers of her right hand.

  He took it and looked at it. The foil caught the bright morning sun and heliographed darts of light at his eyes. “What is it?”

  “Product four synthetic mescaline. The heaviest, cleanest chemical ever made.” She hesitated. “Maybe you should just flush it down the john when you get home. It might fuck you up worse than you are. But it might help. I’ve heard of it.”

  “Have you ever seen it?”

  She smiled bitterly. “No.”

  “Will you do something for me? If you can?”

  “If I can.”

  “Call me on Christmas day.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re like a book I haven’t finished. I want to know how a little more of it comes out. Make it a collect call. Here, I’ll write down the number.”

  He was fumbling a pen out of his pocket when she said, “No.”

  He looked at her, puzzled and hurt. “No?”

  “I can get the number from directory assistance if I need it. But maybe it would be best not to.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I like you, but it’s like someone put a hurtin' on you. I can’t explain. It’s like you were going to do something really bonkers.”

  “You think I’m a fruitcake,” he heard himself say. “Well, fuck you.”

  She got out of the car stiffly. He leaned over. “Olivia-”

  “Maybe that’s not my name.”

  “Maybe it is. Please call.”

  “Be careful with that stuff,” she said, pointing at the little aluminum packet. “You’re space walking, too.”

  “Good-bye. Be careful.”

  “Careful, what’s that?” The bitter smile again. “Good-bye, Mr. Dawes. Thanks. You’re good in bed, do you mind me saying that? You are. Good-bye.”

  She slammed the door closed, crossed Route 7, and stood at the base of the turnpike entrance ramp. He watched her show a thumb to a couple of cars. Neither of them stopped. Then the road was clear and he U-turned, honking once. In the rearview mirror he saw a small facsimile of her wave.

  Silly twit, he thought, stuffed full of every strange conceit in the world. Still, when he put his hand out to turn on the radio, the fingers trembled.

  He drove back to the city, got on the turnpike, and drove two hundred miles at seventy. Once he almost threw the small aluminum packet out the window. Once he almost took the pill inside. At last he just put it in his coat pocket.

  When he got home he felt washed out, empty of emotion. The 784 extension had progressed during the day; in a couple of weeks the laundry would be ready for the wrecking ball. They had already taken out the heavy equipment. Tom Granger had told him about that in an odd, stilted phone conversation three nights ago. When they leveled it he would spend the day watching. He would even pack a bag lunch.

  There was a letter for Mary from her brother in Jacksonville. He didn’t know about the split, then. He put it aside absently with some other mail for Mary that he kept forgetting to forward.

  He put a TV dinner in the oven and thought about makin
g himself a drink. He decided not to. He wanted to think about his sexual encounter with the girl the night before, relish it, explore its nuances. A few drinks and it would take on the unnatural, fevered color of a bad sex movie-Restless Coeds, ID Required-and he didn’t want to think of her like that.

  But it wouldn’t come, not the way he wanted it. He couldn’t remember the precise tight feel of her breasts or the secret taste of her nipples. He knew that the actual friction of intercourse had been more pleasurable with her than with Mary. Olivia had been a snugger fit, and once his penis had popped out of her vagina with an audible sound, like the pop of a champagne cork. But he couldn’t really say what the pleasure had been. Instead of being able to feel it, he wanted to masturbate. The desire disgusted him. Furthermore, his disgust disgusted him. She wasn’t holy, he assured himself as he sat down to eat his TV dinner. Just a tramp on the bum. To Las Vegas, yet. He found himself wishing that he could view the whole incident with Magliore’s jaundiced eye, and that disgusted him most of all.

  Later that night he got drunk in spite of all his good intentions, and around ten o’clock the familiar maudlin urge to call Mary rose up in him. He masturbated instead, in front of the TV, and came to climax while an announcer was showing incontrovertibly that Anacin hit and held the highest pain-relief level of any brand.

  December 8, 1973

  He didn’t go riding Saturday. He wandered uselessly around the house, putting off the thing that had to be done. At last he called the home of his in-laws. Lester and Jean Galloway, Mary’s parents, were both nearing their seventies. On his previous calls, Jean (whom Charlie had always called “Mamma Jean") had answered the telephone, her voice freezing to ice chips when she realized who was on the line. To her, and to Lester also, undoubtedly, he was like some animal that had run amok and bitten her daughter. Now the animal kept calling up, obviously drunk, whining for their girl to come back so he could bite her again.

  He heard Mary herself answer, “Hello?” with enough relief so he could talk normally.

  “Me, Mary.”

  “Oh, Bart. How are you?” Impossible to read her voice.

  “Fair.”

  “How are the Southern Comfort supplies holding out?”

  “Mary, I’m not drinking.”

  “Is that a victory?” She sounded cold, and he felt a touch of panic, mostly that his judgment had been impossibly bad. Could someone he had known so long and whom he thought he knew so well be slipping away so easily?

  “I guess it is,” he said lamely.

  “I understand the laundry had to close down,” she said.

  “Probably just temporary.” He had the weird sensation that he was riding in an elevator, conversing uncomfortably with someone who regarded him as a bore.

  “That isn’t what Tom Granger’s wife said.” There, accusation at last. Accusation was better than nothing.

  “Tom won’t have any problem. The competition uptown has been after him for years. The Brite-Kleen people.”

  He thought she sighed. “Why did you call, Bart?”

  “I think we ought to get together,” he said carefully. “We have to talk this over, Mary.”

  “Do you mean a divorce?” She said it calmly enough, but he thought it was her voice in which he sensed panic now.

  “Do you want one?”

  “I don’t know what I want.” Her calm fractured and she sounded angry and scared. “I thought everything was fine. I was happy and I thought you were. Now, all at once, that’s all changed.”

  “You thought everything was fine,” he repeated. He was suddenly furious with her. “You must have been pretty stupid if you thought that. Did you think I kicked away my job for a practical joke, like a high school senior throwing a cherry bomb into a toilet?”

  “Then what is it, Bart? What happened?”

  His anger collapsed like a rotten yellow snowbank and he found that there were tears beneath. He fought them grimly, feeling betrayed. This wasn’t supposed to happen sober. When you were sober you should be able to keep fucking control of yourself. But here he was, wanting to spill out everything and sob on her lap like a kid with a busted skate and a skinned knee. But he couldn’t tell her what was wrong because he didn’t precisely know and crying without knowing was too much like it’s-time-for-the-loony-bin stuff.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally.

  “Charlie?”

  Helplessly, he said: “If that was part of it, how could you be so blind to the rest of it?”

  “I miss him too, Bart. Still. Every day.”

  Resentment again. You’ve got a funny way of showing it, then.

  “This is no good,” he said finally. Tears were trickling down his cheeks but he had kept them out of his voice. Gentlemen, I think we’ve got it licked, he thought, and almost cackled. “Not over the phone, I called to suggest lunch on Monday. Handy Andy’s.”

  “All right. What time?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I can get off work.” The joke fell to the floor and died bloodlessly there.

  “One o’clock?” she asked.

  “Sure. I’ll get us a table.”

  “Reserve one. Don’t just get there at eleven and start drinking.”

  “I won’t,” he said humbly, knowing he probably would.

  There was a pause. There seemed nothing else to say. Faintly, almost lost in the hum of the open wire, ghostly other voices discussed ghostly other things. Then she said something that surprised him totally.

  “Bart, you need to see a psychiatrist.”

  “I need a what?”

  “Psychiatrist. I know how that sounds, just coming out flat. But I want you to know that whatever we decide, I won’t come back and live with you unless you agree.”

  “Good-bye, Mary,” he said slowly. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

  “Bart, you need help I can’t give.”

  Carefully, inserting the knife as well as he could over two miles of blind wire, he said: “I knew that anyway. Good-bye, Mary.”

  He hung up before he could hear the result and caught himself feeling glad. Game, set, and match. He threw a plastic milk pitcher across the room and caught himself feeling glad that he hadn’t thrown something breakable. He opened the cupboard over the sink, yanked out the first two glasses his hands came to, and threw them on the floor. They shattered.

  Baby, you fucking baby! he screamed at himself. Why don’t you just hold your fucking breath until you turn fucking BLUE?

  He slammed his right fist against the wall to shut out the voice and cried out at the pain. He held his wounded right in his left and stood in the middle of the floor, trembling. When he had himself under control he got a dustpan and the broom and swept the mess up, feeling scared and sullen and hung over.

  December 9, 1973

  He got on the turnpike, drove a hundred and fifty miles, and then drove back. He didn’t dare drive any farther. It was the first gasless Sunday and all the turnpike pit stops were closed. And he didn’t want to walk. See? He told himself. This is how they get shitbirds like you, Georgie. Fred? Is that really you? To what do I owe the honor of this visit, Freddy? Fuck off, buddy. On the way home he heard this public service ad on the radio:

  “So you’re worried about the gasoline shortage and you want to make sure that you and your family aren’t caught short this winter. So now you’re on your way to your neighborhood gas station with a dozen five-gallon cans. But if you’re really worried about your family, you better turn around and go back home. Improper storage of gasoline is dangerous. It’s also illegal, but never mind that for a minute. Consider this: When gasoline fumes mix with the air, they become explosive. And one gallon of gas has the explosive potential of twelve sticks of dynamite. Think about that before you fill those cans. And then think about your family. You see-we want you to live.

  “This has been a public service announcement from WLDM. The Music People remind you to leave gasoline storage to the people who are equipped to do it properly.”


  He turned off the radio, slowed down to fifty, and pulled back into the cruising lane. “Twelve sticks of dynamite,” he said. “Man, that’s amazing.”

  If he had looked into the rearview mirror, he would have seen that he was grinning.

  December 10, 1973

  He got to Handy Andy’s at just past eleven-thirty and the headwaiter gave him a table beside the stylized batwings that led to the lounge-not a good table, but one of the few empties left as the place filled up for lunch. Handy Andy’s specialized in steaks, chops, and something called the Andyburger, which looked a little like a chef’s salad stuck between a huge sesame seed roll with a toothpick to hold the whole contraption together. Like all big city restaurants within executive walking distance, it went through indefinable cycles of inness and outness. Two months ago he could have come in here at noon and had his pick of tables-three months hence he might be able to do the same. To him, it had always been one of life’s minor mysteries, like the incidents in the books of Charles Fort, or the instinct that always brought the swallows back to Capistrano.

  He looked around quickly as he sat down, afraid he would see Vinnie Mason or Steve Ordner or some other laundry executive. But the place was stuffed with strangers. To his left, a young man was trying to persuade his girl that they could afford three days in Sun Valley this February. The rest of the room’s conversation was just soft babble-soothing.

  “A drink, sir?” The waiter was at his elbow.

  “Scotch-rocks, please,” he said.

  “Very good, sir,” the waiter said.

  He made the first one last until noon, killed two more by twelve-thirty, and then, just mulishly, he ordered a double. He was just draining it dry when he saw Mary walk in and pause in the door between the foyer and the dining room, looking for him. Heads turned to look at her and he thought: Mary, you ought to thank me-you’re beautiful. He raised his right hand and waved.